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Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part IV)

There was a devastating earthquake in the news yesterday — great human suffering. So much sadness in this world… war and violence, poverty, hunger, disease.

Yet, in our Shikantaza Zazen, we are to instructed to sit with life without thinking “good” or “bad,” dropping all resistance and judgments about how things are, not wishing that our self or the world ’should be’ or ‘had better be’ some other way than just as we find them.

We drop all thoughts of “good” and “bad,” “right” vs. “wrong,” “just” and “unjust,” “happy” and “sad,” we experience a world that just-is-what-it-is. It goes-the-way-it-goes, even if that way is not the way we personally might desire. And we go with its flow, abandoning resistance to the direction taken. Letting aside both “cruel” and “gentle,“ “ugly” and “kind,” we no longer resist, do not judge, and embrace it all … even the most terrible.

In doing so, the hard borders between our self and this life-world soften or fully tumble away… and there is just oneness-beyond-one with all conditions.

But need we stop there? In that wholeness and tranquility, are we not left uncaring, blind, emotionless, apathetic, cold-hearted, passive to the pain of others?

NOT AT ALL!

For ours can be a path of acceptance without acceptance, inner stillness and outward action combined, allowing and tolerant yet resisting what needs to be resisted, judging what must be judged in life (while also dropping all judgments) – all at once, as if precisely blending views of life seen from different angles. It is much the same in the case of a man or woman who, facing an illness, perhaps some cancer, accepts the condition fully — yet fights the good fight for a cure. We need not feel anger within at the natural state which is the disease, we can accept within that all life is impermanent and that death and sickness are just the reality… but still we might search for the healing medicine, struggling without for health and life. We can know that within and without are not two.

Our Zen practice teaches us that we can live by seemingly contradictory viewpoints at once, uniting all, without conflict. We might say that this world, our life, is much like living in an imperfect house, in need of work, with perhaps a leaky roof, dust and spiders, and broken windows. In “Just Sitting,” we simply sit to drop all resistance to the house we have been living in all along, to realize that there is nowhere to “go” in life, to cease all efforts to add to or take away from the structure, to let go of the ego’s insisting on how things “should be” in order for the house to be “good” … we ARE that house, at Peace in our True Home! Then we find, in dropping that resistance, that the house we have always been in is “perfectly what it is,” and we can be joyful right where we are. HOWEVER, we can be content with that house even as, hand in hand, there is still much serious repair work to do (an acceptance-without-acceptance of the leaky windows, spiders and creaky doors). There is nothing to prevent our fixing those, even as we accept their existence! We can accept and not accept simultaneously, repair what needs to be repaired.

Thus, in our “Just Sitting” Shikantaza, we completely accept, embrace and allow the universe, and all in it, just as it is. We drop all thoughts of likes and dislikes, dreams and regrets and need for change, hopes and fears. But simultaneously, hand in hand without the slightest deviation (on another mental “track,” we might say), we live our lives as human beings, and living life requires choices, goals, likes and dislikes, dreams and hopes for change.

War, fire, flood, death and disease, humanity and nature’s most horrible turns can all be observed dispassionately and from an unshakable inner peace, fully accepted… all while we choose to resist what we can, to extend comfort and compassion as we can, to make the world and our selves better when and where we can.

CLICK HERE for today’s Sit-A-Long video.

Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 15 to 35 minutes is recommended.

Re: Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part IV)

Saw a koan that reminded me of your story Jundo, about the woman that faced the mortal illness, accepted it, yet continued to fight it fully understanding and not resisting that death is very much in the cards.

Tanzan wrote sixty postal cards on the last day of his life, and asked an attendent to mail them. Then he passed away.

The cards read:

I am departing from this world.
This is my last announcement.
Tanzan
July 27, 1892

No sign of rejection of imminent death, no "it can't be this way!", just a simple notice that Tanzan is about to die, yet instead of just "sitting on his lotus flower" as you put it he stepped foward, took action on this fact, and let anyone that needed to know, know if anything I think so they can organize and plan ahead if they had any engagements with him.

Tanzen, the woman you talked about is very motivating. If full acceptence of something that is often a ever present, sometimes more, sometimes less thing like existential dread can happen then it at the very least for me changes disbelief while trying anyway in sitting to benefit of the doubt and sitting. Your story really brought it home. koans may or may not be based on a actual event(s) from what I learned but hearing that someone died not freaking out all throughout knowing that it is likely to happen is not something you hear about often.

Re: Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part IV)

Recently, because of my academic studies, I read a book on Leadership .... central point of it talks about that to be a leader is necessary to know the needs of your team and learn to serve them so that they can meet those needs, with unconditional love, but this needs are not to be confused with mere wishes, and that love is nothing to accept people as they are, even if we disagree with them .... After reading this post, I think I understand better the point .... desires are created by our judgments of good, bad, "if only", etc. The needs, on the other hand, are natural, simple, perhaps minimal. If we learn to accept the world as it is, living into it becomes equally natural, simple ... and perhaps we can see what it is really ... and so the compassion for others (and for oneself) arise naturally, and action-body/ideas-mind become just as natural.

Re: Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part IV)

Originally Posted by lipor

Recently, because of my academic studies, I read a book on Leadership .... central point of it talks about that to be a leader is necessary to know the needs of your team and learn to serve them so that they can meet those needs, with unconditional love, but this needs are not to be confused with mere wishes, and that love is nothing to accept people as they are, even if we disagree with them .... After reading this post, I think I understand better the point .... desires are created by our judgments of good, bad, "if only", etc. The needs, on the other hand, are natural, simple, perhaps minimal. If we learn to accept the world as it is, living into it becomes equally natural, simple ... and perhaps we can see what it is really ... and so the compassion for others (and for oneself) arise naturally, and action-body/ideas-mind become just as natural.

Hi Lipor,

I am not sure about this, and I am much simpler.

Just live in this world of complexity, with so many dissatisfactions, things to do and choices to be made ...

... simultaneously knowing All Satisfactions, No Coming or Going, No Choice In Need of Making.

At Once As One. Like Two Sides of a No-Sided Coin. Live with Compassion.

Does this mean I should accept the world as it is at the same time as I accept my will to try to change things that I don`t like or add things that make the world better? Things that I don`t accept, I accept that I don`t accept, so I do something about it, things that I like, I accept that I like and don`t try to get rid of my will to get more of it.
At the same time as letting everything be as it is. I`m not shure if I`m really getting this...
Gassho

Exactly and absolutely not. Your question is the result of trying to intellectually understand, put into boxes, label it. Thats normal, I do this too. However, when you just listen, soak up the teaching and sit with it, I'm sure you will come to the answer. Or just loose the question on the way,
Gassho
Myoku

Exactly and absolutely not. Your question is the result of trying to intellectually understand, put into boxes, label it. Thats normal, I do this too. However, when you just listen, soak up the teaching and sit with it, I'm sure you will come to the answer. Or just loose the question on the way,
Gassho
Myoku

Exactly and absolutely not. Your question is the result of trying to intellectually understand, put into boxes, label it. Thats normal, I do this too. However, when you just listen, soak up the teaching and sit with it, I'm sure you will come to the answer. Or just loose the question on the way,
Gassho
Myoku

Hi, Yes. This is something that must be felt in the bones, pierced and lived.

Buddhas sit beyond attachments and aversions, choices and desires, need and lack, you and me, this and that. A moment of Zazen is a moment of Buddha.

People, by necessity, live in a world (we call it delusion, "Samsara") of that which we love and that which we do not, choices and desires, need and lack, you and me, this and that bumping into each other.

Most people live only in delusion, in Samsara.

In this practice, sitting on the cushion, we may come to embody Buddha.

But the magic trick is to be and live both at once, as one. That's our Practice.

It is kind of like living two sides of a no sided coin. Not to be understood intellectually so much as tasted, embodied and manifested in living.

Thank you Jundo, your teaching is very timely and exactly what I need right now.

Many years ago, when my practise was much stronger, I would face a difficult situation by saying to myself, "I have buddha-nature and a buddha remains undisturbed." I realize from your teaching that this statement is incomplete because buddha-nature also gives us compassion, so now the saying can become, "I have buddha-nature and a buddha remains undisturbed while desiring relief from suffering for all beings."

Or, to shorten it further: "let go, accept and act with love." Much easier said than done (as always).

This talk was very good for me as it dealt with an issue that I sometimes struggle with. After much sitting, and a life changing 'realisation' I had back in 2011, I had found that I had become somewhat neutral to the human world around me; non judgemental, accepting, I had come to understand the 'suchness' of everything. I was approaching life with equanimity to the point of passivity and detachment. My wife told me that she preferred the Richard before he stepped on the path!

Over time I have begun to interact more on a 'human' level than in a metaphysical one. I see it as I have 'gone up the mountain and returned to the village'.. only I have not returned quite the same. Now I see and feel things differently. My journey had allowed me to pull myself and the world and everything apart and then put it back together again with an understanding. I had wondered, as a child, where I fit in with life the universe and everything. 30 or so years on I had realised that there was no separate 'I'.

For a time, since 2011, I was seeing things with suchness and equanimity. Duality had ceased and descriptions such as good and bad had become meaningless. What was good to one person was bad to another so an event or situation was both good and bad at the same time. i.e. it was just an event or situation. It was as if I had now got 'Zen eyes' and I could no longer look at things with feeling, compassion, judgement, emotion... I had become 'cold'.

I dealt with this by considering that I could put on some glasses and see things with a 'human eye' again. I could look at things with two perspectives: Glasses off = zen eyes / Glasses on = human eyes. Yet all the time knowing that the glasses just helped me to see things the way that human kind saw them... remove the glasses and the reality of impermanence and suchness was revealed.

It took me a long time to get used to wearing the glasses and regaining the love and compassion that I have for life and those in it. Now I can remove them 'in my mind' and keep them on all the time but I still struggle sometimes, as if the lenses have fallen out and I am just seeing things as they are.. Your lesson IV has given me a great tool to help complete this step: A monocle!

I have just traded in my glasses for a monocle and now I can look out of both eyes (Zen and human) at the same time!

Yes, come back to just being human, Return to the Marketplace, love and laugh and cry, have aversions and attractions and all range of emotions (hopefully without falling to harmful extremes or being their prisoner) ... even if one can see through them as one wants.

No reason to be numb to life. Live.

I sometimes use the analogy of glasses or seeing out of two eyes too. Seeing out of only one eye is a form of blindness.

Greg : Thank You for sharing this....I love it and I'm sure it will be of help in keeping the practice.

Originally Posted by Sleeps

Saw a koan that reminded me of your story Jundo, about the woman that faced the mortal illness, accepted it, yet continued to fight it fully understanding and not resisting that death is very much in the cards.

Tanzan wrote sixty postal cards on the last day of his life, and asked an attendent to mail them. Then he passed away.

The cards read:

I am departing from this world.
This is my last announcement.
Tanzan
July 27, 1892

No sign of rejection of imminent death, no "it can't be this way!", just a simple notice that Tanzan is about to die, yet instead of just "sitting on his lotus flower" as you put it he stepped foward, took action on this fact, and let anyone that needed to know, know if anything I think so they can organize and plan ahead if they had any engagements with him.

Tanzen, the woman you talked about is very motivating. If full acceptence of something that is often a ever present, sometimes more, sometimes less thing like existential dread can happen then it at the very least for me changes disbelief while trying anyway in sitting to benefit of the doubt and sitting. Your story really brought it home. koans may or may not be based on a actual event(s) from what I learned but hearing that someone died not freaking out all throughout knowing that it is likely to happen is not something you hear about often.

I've been revisiting this series to 'rejuvenate' my practice. Let me say, thank you! A lot has changed in my life rather dramatically, and I often see myself clinging onto these constructs of how things 'should be' or how 'unlucky' I am. Often, I try to fight my anxiety or depression- resisting this disease, and pining for things to be better- when I can take my medicine and allow things to exist without the illusory discrimination.. To drop these judgments, and to sit with life just as it is, whole and complete, is enlightenment in itself.

In the way of Shikantaza I encourage here, we are just sitting ... free of judgement, free of grabbing thoughts, free of worry or contemplating what comes in the future or what happened in the past. We are just sitting, with open spacious awareness ... with a mind much as a mirror which does not judge or reject all reflected within it. One sits radically in the wholeness and completeness of that moment, and simply sitting is the one action necessary to do in that moment of life. Thoughts may come and go, but we do not latch on nor stir them up.

However, sometimes counting or following the breath is necessary or good to follow for those student (especially beginners) really cannot get their thoughts to settle a bit, and for all of us if the mind is storming.

Thank you for this. The analogy of living in a house in need of repair, yet accepting the house as it is, is very meaningful to me as my house is a continual work in progress. I love my house while at the same time being aware of all that still needs to be done. This is very helpful to me as this is one area i have struggled to really grasp. I'm very grateful for this lesson. Karen